South Of Hell

Chapter Four

The College Inn was a motel hard by the I-94 spine that connected Ann Arbor with Detroit. His room had the disinfectant, moldy-carpet smell of a place that had hosted one too many beer parties.

Louis stayed in the room just long enough to put in a call to the Echo Bay Sheriff’s Department. The dispatcher told him Undersheriff Frye was tied up all evening at a mayor’s banquet. Louis left a message and then a second one on Joe’s home phone to call him when she got in. Then he headed down to the bar.

The place was packed with bodies, noise, and smoke. Louis was wondering why a dingy bar in a rundown motel was so packed when he spotted the TV in the corner of the room.

Basketball.

Then his eyes began to pick up all the maize-and-blue ball caps and sweatshirts.

Worse, Michigan basketball.

“Turn up the fuckin’ sound, Fred!” someone bellowed.

Worse yet, the NCAA championship, Michigan versus Seton Hall.

Louis elbowed his way to the bar. It took ten minutes to get the attention of the sweating bartender.

“You serve any food here?” Louis yelled over the din of drunks and the pregame cackling of the sportscasters.

“Free tacos ’til ten,” the man said, pointing to a buffet table.

“Bring me a Heineken,” Louis said.

“Don’t got.”

Louis sighed. “Stroh’s.”

A few long pulls from the beer did a little to wash the bad taste Shockey had left. Louis ordered a second beer, and his gnawing stomach finally propelled him to the buffet, where he filled a paper plate with three soggy tacos. There was an empty stool by the waitress station, and Louis pushed in front of a beefy kid in a go blue sweatshirt to claim it.

“Hey, man!” the kid sputtered, puffing out his chest.

“Get lost,” Louis said.

The kid backed off with a scowl. Louis sat hunched over, wolfing down the tacos, his eyes on the TV but not really watching.

He was thinking about the woman with the spatula back at Krazy Jim’s and the look on her face when he screwed up his order, like she knew he didn’t belong there.

How did she know?

In his four years as a student here, he had never once set foot in Krazy Jim’s, had never gone to any of the student hangouts. No fried eggs at Angelo’s after pulling an all-nighter, no sangria at Dominick’s with a Sigma Kappa beauty, no winter-refuge pizza at the Cottage Inn, no postgame brews at the Brown Jug.

He had never felt comfortable in those places. The only place he could remember going to more than once was the old Fleetwood Diner. There he could sit in silence with his books, watching the bums and cops just coming off shift as he sipped dark chocolate milk made to order with Hershey’s syrup. No one bothered him there. He never felt out of place there.

Another lifetime ago.

“You want another?”

Louis looked at his watch. It was after ten. He shook his head, set his empty Stroh’s in the trough, and headed back up to his room.

The red button on the phone wasn’t blinking. He knew Joe was busy lately. The Leelanau sheriff, Mike Villella, was retiring, and Joe was the automatic candidate for the position in the election six months from now. She was trying hard to impress the locals, and in a town like Echo Bay, putting in an appearance at the pancake dinner meant as much as keeping the poachers in line.

Still, why the hell hadn’t she called when she knew he was only four hours away?

Louis kicked off his shoes, grabbed the remote, and lay down on the bed. He flipped on the TV. It went right to the NCAA tournament, like the satellite was programmed to pick up anything remotely to do with UM sports.

His eyes slid to the phone. He muted the game, picked up the receiver, and dialed. Mel Landeta picked up on the second ring.

“I figured you’d be at O’Sullivan’s,” Louis said.

“Raining like hell down here tonight,” Mel said. “Hold on a sec.”

The phone clattered. In the background, Solomon Burke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” fell to a whisper. Mel picked the receiver up again.

“How’s Michigan?” he asked.

“A waste of time.”

“What does the cop need you for?”

“It’s an old missing persons case,” Louis said. “A woman disappeared nine years ago, but her car was found abandoned. I was the responding. The detective who worked the case is trying to reopen it.”

“I hear an ‘and’ coming.”

“He planted a bloody bra in the trunk, and now he wants me to change my report.”

Louis could hear the click of a lighter as Mel fired up a cigarette. “What about copies of the original?”

“Only one. He says he destroyed it.”

Mel was quiet.

“He’s a burnout who’s hearing footsteps,” Louis said. “He thinks reopening an old case is going to drown out the sound.”

Mel still didn’t say anything.

“What?” Louis said.

“Nothing,” Mel said.

“Don’t give me that shit.”

“What you just said is something only a young man can say.”

Louis was quiet. On the silent TV screen, Glen Rice hit a jumper. Screaming and stomping thundered from the room next door.

“Maybe there’s something more,” Mel said.

“Like what?”

“Tell me more about the woman.”

“Her name was Jean. Married to some guy named Owen Brandt. They lived on a farm somewhere west of here.” He paused. “The husband reported her missing but later admitted he thought she had just run off with someone.”

“You remember what she looked like?”

Louis hesitated while his brain retrieved a memory. “Not really.”

“Pretty?”

Louis couldn’t bring the face into focus. “What’s your point?”

“Cherchez la femme.”

“Help me out here a little, Mel.”

“Il y a une femme dans toute les affaires; aussitot qu’on me fait un rapport, je dis, ‘Cherchez la femme.’”

“More help than that.”

“Roughly translated, ‘There’s a woman behind every case; as soon as they bring me a report, I say, ‘Look for the woman.’ You ever think this Shockey guy might have known this woman? And maybe that’s why he’s so hung up on the case?”

Louis was still trying to see Jean Brandt’s photo in the missing persons file. A shard fell into place: an old snapshot gone faded orange and too blurry to make out anything but dark hair.

“Are you going to help him or not?”

“The guy tried to bribe me, Mel. I’m just going to walk away.”

He could hear Mel lighting another cigarette. “You going up to see Joe before you come home?”

“Yeah, if I can ever get a hold of her.”

“She busy again?”

Louis was quiet. He had never talked to Mel about the strain fifteen hundred miles was putting on his and Joe’s relationship, but Mel’s radar picked up on things.

“Well,” Mel said, “I’m beat and need to get some sleep. Tell Joe I said hello when you talk to her.”

Louis said goodbye and hung up. For a few minutes, he just sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the phone, the cheers and rumblings from adjoining rooms a dull roar in the back of his mind.

There’s a woman behind every case.

Maybe Mel was right. Maybe Shockey had been in love with Jean Brandt, and maybe it was the memory of her and what he didn’t or couldn’t do for her nine years ago that drove his desperation now.

Louis supposed guilt over letting her disappearance go unresolved was a better motivator than trying to hang on to a job, but he still wasn’t sure it was enough to keep him here to help Shockey. What could he do that the Ann Arbor PD or Livingston County Sheriff’s Office couldn’t?

The phone rang.

Louis grabbed it. “Joe?”

“Hey, you got the keg over there?”

“Wrong room, buddy,” Louis said.

He hung up and lay down on the bed, staring at the yellowed ceiling tiles.

Nine years. Shockey had been missing her for nine years. Nine years that must have felt like a lifetime for him.

Louis pulled himself to a sitting position and dug Shockey’s home phone number from his pocket. The paper was damp, the blurred numbers hard to read. The phone rang eight or nine times, and Louis was about to give up when Shockey’s voice cut through the line.

“Yeah?”

“Detective, this is Kincaid. One question. Were you involved with Jean Brandt?”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Then a long exhalation. “Yeah, I was in love with her.”

Louis shut his eyes. “Okay, Detective. I’ll give you one more day to convince me this is worth my time. But I don’t want to hear any more crap about falsifying reports. You got that?”

“Yeah.”

Louis rubbed his brow, nagged by the feeling that he was going to regret this.

“So, what do we do?” Shockey asked. “Where do we start?”

“I want to see this farm. Where is it?”

“It’s about a half-hour west of Ann Arbor, just south of Hell.”